Enzo allows his mind free to wander as he sits in his cell, staring through the bars to Damon's empty cell. He remembers the way his clothes, hair, skin smelled of smoke. He remembers the black bile dried to his shirt, after hours of coughing and throwing up the smoke that threatened to take his lungs. He remembers a needle sliding into his arm as he fights to stay conscious; the needle makes the world he was fighting against disappear into nothingness as the vervain burned through his viens. Enzo looks around his cell, remembering the amount of disappointment he felt to wake up again in the place the brings him never ending pain.
He learned that everyone in the fire died, he was the unlucky survivor. He also met Dr. Fells, the man who took over Whitmore's project. Fells was strict compared to Whitmore. Robert is fired within days, after Fells shows early one morning to find him asleep. The new handlers, Jack and Henry, are better at hiding their emotions but less experienced. Enzo enjoys taking advantage of their costly mistakes for the first few weeks; not caring about the consequences that come when he bites someone.
Time no longer exists, he's never been to another New Year's Eve party. Fells shows how time passes as he rots down here, as well as the infrequent changes in handlers. Enzo forever stays the same, his skin does not show his scars, his hair does not change color, he does not lose weight despite the starvation he feels. Enzo is stuck in time, and he hates it.
Sometimes he thinks of Caroline, only allowing is brain to torture him with her memory when he's too weak from the experiments to stop it. He wonders if she married James or if she fell hopelessly in love with a man who deserves it. He wonders if she got to live her dream, and work as well as be a mother. He wonders if her children take after her and have hearts too big for this world. But mostly he wonders if he will get to see her again, get to see how time changed her golden waves and skin, to see if she grew more comfortable with her imperfections, to say thank you for giving him hope in humanity.
Enzo sighs as he hears the man who took over for Dr. Fells, Grayson Gilbert, a man who is so full of emotion that Enzo wants to rip his throat out and give it to Gilbert's family. It's not even the emotions that irritate him, it's the way Gilbert is so effortlessly able to become a monster the moment Enzo is laying on the table waiting for them to cut him open. Unlike the other doctors, who treated Enzo with indifference and kept their personal lives personal, Gilbert is an open book and Enzo knows his wife's name, his childrens' names, the way he takes his coffee, how everyone seems to love him. But no one knows the side that Enzo does, the cold side that treats Enzo as if he was worse than a dog. Gilbert's frustration and anger when he hits a wall is palpable, Enzo can feel it in the experiments sometimes, in each cut.
At least Dr. Gilbert's assistant, Dr. Wes Maxfield is tolerable. Maxfield leaves his personal life personal, and treats Enzo as if he's just a means to an end, nothing more. Gilbert was the one's that started experimenting with Enzo, seeing if he could control him, if he could create him into a vampire hunter. Maxfield is the one that is currently refining Gilbert's dream, as Gilbert harvest's blood from Enzo to help his human patients.
Gilbert walks in, with Maxfield behind him. "I am going to observe you for the next few months, and when you are ready the project is all yours." Gilbert says, while Maxfield hangs off his every word.
Enzo doesn't bother to ponder what they are talking about, to busy bracing himself for the vervain to enter him. Maxfield got rid of the handlers, and installed cameras, which Enzo learned watch him every moment of every day, and Maxfield prepares Enzo himself by using a gurney to transfer him from his cell to the table.
After months of Gilbert watching as Maxfield, Enzo learns that Gilbert is leaving to spent more time with his practice and family. When Gilbert stops showing up with Maxfield, Enzo beings to realize how much time has passed. He watched a middle aged Fells grow old and retire, than his young assistance fill out into manhood and become an adult. All of these lives are passing him by, and he doesn't know how much time he has left before everything he ever knew is gone.
He suspects it could be years, but for all he knows it's only been days, and when that passes Maxfield injects him with something and lets him free for a day. Enzo knows it's so Maxfield can experiment on the new girl, Elena, but he doesn't care. Enzo knows the poison is slowly desiccating him, he can feel it, but that's easy to ignore as he gets to see the world beyond his cell for the first time in decades. He learns the date from some well to do student, and he is shocked by how much time has passed. 2011.
Enzo makes it to the classroom Maxfield told him to go, and waits, patience is something he's practiced.
A/N The next chapter will contain some dialogue from the episode. Now that we are finally in the present, I would love to know if there's anything you guys would like to see. Thank you to everyone who still reads this, despite my horrible time delays between chapters.
Thank you for reading!
Until next time (:
Loveklaroline: Bonjour je m'appelle is about the extent of my French (: Enzo's back! I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I'm excited for the next chapter, now that everyone's together. I'm having a difficult time writing the Enzo/Caroline reunion because Caroline is not the same girl from the show, so they won't meet in the same way. I wish you had an account so I could tell you my idea, oh well, I guess you'll have to wait ;) Until next time! I'm glad your class went well, and I hope you have a fabulous holiday!